LudiSTELO // Live @ Zandari Festa Review

Live Reviews
5th October 2018
Joe Robinson

LudiSTELO are an epic synth rock / grunge band that I was lucky enough to see at Zandari Festa 2018’s opening party at The Convent last night. Think all the good parts of stadium rock with none of the pomposity and all of the epicness. I fear the work ‘epic’ may be used a lot in this review.

LudiSTELO opened their set with a gradual build up of pulsing synths and gritty bass. The initial shock for me was the fact that while they have all these epic, swirling synth sounds bouncing around the room, they still choose an amazing, dirty bass sound. It works extremely well. The guitarist also throws out some amazing, soaring melodies. Not hair metal soaring, more like a ‘I’ve stuck my face out the window of a fighter jet’ kind of soaring. If you can imagine a cross between Nile Rodgers and a living, breathing synthesizer, that’s LudiSTELO’s guitarist. Awesome right? LudiSTELO have one song in their set that stood out to me as being amazing. It’s called “Water Roof“, and it blends an almost Muse-like bass groove with atmospheric synths and vocal harmonies.

One thing not to be overlooked with this band is their absolute machine of a rhythm section. At times it felt as if the bass and the drums were being played by the same person simultaneously, and I wouldn’t have put it past them to be able to do that. LudiSTELO are more of a synth grunge orchestra than your average band. Their absolute synchronicity and dedication to their sound and performance makes them one hell of an opener to Zandari Festa this year. I was very happy to witness some of the dirtiest riffs in the eastern hemisphere this early on into our Korean trip!